Addressing the issue of problem children

Geoffrey Canada at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

The above video is Geoffrey Canada talking about how America fails it’s black children, and how cheap it would be to fix the situation when they’re young versus spending millions to lock them up later. Truly inspirational.

Add comment | May 9th, 2009

Eurotunnel customer service rocks!

Sometimes you make a mistake and just dread picking up the phone to fix things. I just did that. I messed up (by one day) the date I meant to return from France by Eurotunnel.
Naturally I’d bought the cheapest possible ticket with “no changes or refunds” allowed. How did the friendly gentleman I spoke to deal with this?
He offered to change to the same time on the correct day but unfortunately, it was going to cost an additional £6 - not a fee - just how much I’d have paid if I got the booking right. 30 seconds of credit card details later and I’m all done - no hassle, no fuss, no issue.
Eurotunnel is one of those weird travel providers, like Easyjet, who secretly give you all kinds of extra stuff - if you turn up early at the Eurotunnel terminal, you can generally just catch an earlier train - miss yours and you’re mostly just allowed to drift on to the next one. It’s wonderful and exactly what you’d expect they’re able to do.
Similarly, easyjet let you catch an earlier return flight for free - if you’re flying to London you can even pick any flight going to any of the London airports.
Great service and I end up a happy customer.

Add comment | April 3rd, 2009

Phillip Jose Farmer has died

The science fictions author famous for serious work wrapped in whimsy is gone.

Add comment | March 21st, 2009

Is the recession saving lives?

The recession means there are fewer shark attacks. Of course it’s mainly because people are taking fewer expensive beach holidays.

Add comment | February 25th, 2009

Do we really think Bush was that dumb?

It’s easy to hate George Bush - he took the world into a war that seems pointless and on his watch the economic stability we built our lives on vanished in months.
Though I’ve always had this feeling that he couldn’t be that stupid. He may have made the wrong decisions, but I never bought into the “Bush as idiot” type thinking. Nor could I buy the “He’s just in it for the oil” factors.
So reading the Iraq war as Poker article was strangely comforting. Though it presents a sensible theory of Bush betting the world on his theory and risk analysis - it somehow seems structured if not sensible. Read it yourself and see if you can see a theory of why the man did what he did. It’s trivial to monday morning quarterback him and god knows we’re better off with Obama, but we can’t dismiss him as completely as we have.

Add comment | February 7th, 2009

Just do the right thing

Apple at some point must have seriously taken to heart the design mantra of “Never surprise the user”. The Mac delights because whenever you’re not sure how to do something, almost always the first thing you try works.
I’ve just had the same experience on my iPhone - with version 2.2 of the software you can download podcasts over the air instead of having to sync via your Mac. I did this and accrued a set of execrable Jimmy Carr type content (more on why he’s annoying at some point) which I simply couldn’t get rid of.
Principal of least surprise to the rescue - turns out you simply swipe across the episodes in exactly the way you delete mail - problem solved.
I contrast this with my new Blackberry Bold. Truly a great piece of design compared to my old blackberry, but they’ve simply forgotten entirely about how people will actually use the thing. It’s email is really pretty good (though it too has many annoying processes). The rest of the phone is horrible. Everything seems to take about 20 clicks and rolls on that weird little ball in the centre of the keyboard. Applications don’t seem to remember what you were doing last or remember in excruciating detail. Example:

• The solitaire game included on the phone remembers the state of your game, but when you go back in, it makes you start by selecting a language and then choose to resume your game! Did they assume that my language would change in some way? That I’d want to do anything but resume playing? The contrast is my free iPhone solitaire game which simply returns you to exactly where you were last time in about 3 seconds.
• The contacts application remembers exactly who you were last looking at - except the use case is never that you want to look at that person again - you look up a name to call them or e-mail them. The next time you go into contacts you want to find someone else! Again, the iPhone takes you back to the list of people, though with the name of the last person you looked at front and centre and it’s a simple tap to return to their details (Something I do in about 5% of the cases)

Add comment | January 23rd, 2009

Disintermediation and the enemy of the good

Voltaire said “The perfect is the enemy of the good” and this is the trap Telcos still fall into.

Continue Reading Add comment | December 29th, 2008

What Recession?

This is the scene on Oxford Street yesterday in the midst of the worst financial crisis the UK has had in living memory - it was, once again, impossible to move for the crush of people buying things.

The crush of recession hit shoppers...

Add comment | December 24th, 2008

Funniest Sentence I read today

From Harpers weekly digest:

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, denied saying that Barack Obama’s relatives were
cannibals who ate Polish missionaries. “Mr. Sikorski did not tell a racist joke,” said a spokesman. “He was only giving an example of unpalatable and racist jokes.”

Add comment | November 25th, 2008

I got my money back!

What seems like years but in fact was only 7 weeks or so, Icesave went bankrupt and a pile of money I had in there seemed to vanish. As of this morning I have every pence back - the FSCS did a really excellent job of getting this sorted in short order and kept me really well informed. English institutions really do work well sometimes.

Add comment | November 24th, 2008